Immortal Iron Fists Joins the Ranks of the New Marvel and Amazon Digital-Only Platform Deal

To reach readers and aspiring fans in this new digital age, comic book publisher Marvel is partnering with Amazon’s popular Comixology and Kindle apps, to offer this audience exclusive material only available digitally. These new issues will become part of a Comixology Originals line which will be launching several new titles in the near future.

Immortal Iron Fists has been one of the first titles announced, which will feature a new character to assume the mantle of Iron Fist and be trained by Danny Rand himself to live up to her title: Pei, a monk living in K’un-Lun, has received the mark of the dragon and is the youngest Iron Fist in recorded history. With Danny’s guidance, they will face an adversary that will take both of their combined forces to overcome.

“Immortal Iron Fists serves as a perfect starting point for those new readers who are just discovering the world of Marvel Comics,” said Chip Mosher, comiXology’s Head of Content & Senior Director of Communications, “We’re loving working with Marvel on this line of exclusive content as part of our comiXology Originals program. Giving new and current fans the option to buy or read for free as part of our comiXology Unlimited subscription service is a huge win. We can’t wait to hear from the fans.”

It’s assumed that this new character is being developed to answer several recent claims regarding the racial origin of Danny Rand and how he is represented in the MCU as a white American immersed in Asian origins. To several, this origin is an assassination of Asian culture representation in mainstream media, such as the Netflix shows. While a large fanbase of the longstanding comic book series argue that Danny Rand has always historically been white and new Legacy characters should be established or existing and less popular characters that represent these minorities should be campaigned in place of changing well-established original characters, others argue otherwise when it comes to live-action.

Asyiqin Haron of Geek of Colors argues an interesting point, stating “When we ask for an Asian-America Iron Fist, we’re mainly asking for the change to be applied to the live-action portrayal of Danny Rand. When it comes to representation, it isn’t a competition. Everyone wants to be represented, it’s not who deserves representation more. A change in the cinematic universe doesn’t have to affect the character in the comics. How Danny’s parents died is evidence that they’re already not entirely sticking to canon. If Jason Momoa can be casted as Arthur Curry, why can’t an Asian actor be Danny Rand?´

Both sides bring up interesting points and it seems that while Netflix will be maintaining the original Danny Rand, the comics are aiming to appease both corners with Pei.

What do you think of this new announcement? Will you be grabbing a copy of the new Immortal Iron Fists? Let us know!

Immortal Iron Fists is available now for $2.99 on comiXology and Kindle or free to comiXology Unlimited subscribers as part of their subscription. New users to comiXology’s popular subscription service can also access Immortal Iron Fists for free as part of their 30-day free trial. It wil be a 6-issue bi-weekly series written by Kaare Andrews with art by Afu Chan.